First lady of sole

Jun 01, 2001

Imelda Marcos, widow of disgraced former President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos who fled after a popular revolt in 1986, recently donated her colossal shoe collection to the new Shoe Museum in Marikina, near Manila. The museum’s press release describes the former first lady as ‘an icon of world fashion’ whose shoes ‘were the rave both here and abroad’. Imelda Marcos has denied she ever had a weakness for shoes. She countered criticism of her part in the corruption and plunder of the Marcos regime, claiming in 1987 that descriptions of her prodigious shoe collection were grossly exaggerated. ‘I did not have 3,000 pairs of shoes,’ she clarified, ‘I had 1,060.’